


Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards

by A_Diamond



Series: Beautiful Maladies [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adoption, Adoptive Parents Castiel & Dean Winchester, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Feels, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Major Character Injury, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 05:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Diamond/pseuds/A_Diamond
Summary: Emma’s not-dad’s not-uncle has a saying about family. She knows it’s true—she didn’t meet her little brother until she was eleven and at a group home, but anyone who denies that they’re family is asking for a fight. Still, she’s not sure she wants to be part of the rest of this mess of not-blood ties.





	1. Walk Away

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the mods and to wizard-fallen-angel for the great art of Emma! You can find the art post [here!](http://wizard-fallen-angel.tumblr.com/post/169050680053/my-drawings-for-alxdiamonds-spn-au-big-bang-the)
> 
> Title is from the Tom Waits album of the same name, chapter titles from songs on it. I don't have a Tom Waits problem, you have a Tom Waits problem. Or you should.

_ Thirteen _

The instant the two men walked out of the building, Emma made the one in front for a cop. It was in his deliberate gait, the way his eyes moved too casually to miss anything, how he rested one hand lightly gripped at the V of his buttoned suit jacket. She thought the other guy might be a brand new social worker; he looked terrified and she hadn’t seen him around before, but he dressed like one in a suit that didn’t quite fit and an over-large flasher coat that, on him, somehow added an extra air of helplessness.

The cop didn’t notice that his companion had frozen in place until he met Emma’s gaze and she smirked, nodding her head at the figure behind him.

They might have been there for her. She hadn’t got caught at the minimart the day before, but the place did have cameras and she wasn’t as she should’ve been. She waved Ben over, got ready to tell him to run, but then the cop took the social worker’s hand—gently, fingers brushing his palm before they interlocked—and led him to a bench. He didn’t let go when they sat, just brought his other hand up to stroke the guy’s cheek as he rested their heads together. So instead, reevaluating rapidly, she had Ben wait while she snuck closer.

She didn’t have to try very hard to go unnoticed. Trench Coat’s eyes were closed, and Cop was staring at him like the rest of the world didn’t exist. The first thing she heard was a distressed, gravelly rumble from Trench, “—my father. I can’t do this, Dean. I have no baseline for reference, no appropriate role models. I’d just ruin it, and—”

“Shh,” the cop—Dean—soothed, and actually went so far as to kiss the guy’s forehead. Probably not a social worker there on business, then. “You’re not going to ruin anything. I mean, look at you. You had a shitty deadbeat of a dad and a psycho bitch mom, and you turned out okay. Can’t possibly be worse than that when you’re actually trying, right?”

Trench’s eyes snapped open, startlingly blue and intensely focused. “I don’t want any child to have to turn out like me! That’s the point. They’d be better off without my influence, I’m selfish and unstable and I destroy good people.”

Dean pulled the guy into an embrace so tight Emma swore  _ she _ could feel it, pressing his lips to the top of Trench’s hair. “Swear to god, Cas, I’m going to dig up her grave and burn the bones. Your mom was—” He bit off the words, letting go to run a hand over his short hair, then tilted Cas’s chin up to meet his eyes. “She was a lot of things, but she was never right about you.”

Emma had seen enough to correct some of her assumptions. They obviously weren’t there for her, at least not in in an official capacity. They were a couple looking to build themselves a family, and they’d come to the group home full of problem children despite clearly having their own issues. She didn’t think she was wrong about Dean being a cop, though, and Cas was probably also some kind of do-gooder.

They were just the kind of people to be moved by sob stories, and she and Ben had pretty good ones. So did most of the poor bastards there, of course, but it was enough of a risk that she worried. She didn’t need Ben getting his hopes up again, only to be heartbroken when they were rejected at the last minute for being  _ too much trouble _ . Like puppies sent back to the fucking pound.

Or, worse, someone might get the dumb idea to try splitting them up again. Since they weren’t technically related, had only found each other once they’d been dumped at the group home for the first time, none of the protections that were meant to keep blood siblings together applied. She was pretty sure that their refusal to stay in any placement that wasn’t together had put an end to that, though, especially after the last time. They’d both stayed gone for three days before getting picked up by the cops as runaways.

They didn’t need fake parents, anyway. They didn’t need anyone but each other.

Stepping out from her cover, Emma crossed her arms and walked around to stand in front of them. They looked up in surprise, Dean’s eyes narrowing in suspicion when he recognized her. That was a good start, but she had to cement her reputation as unwantable.

“You’re a cop.” She didn’t bother making it a question and he didn’t bother answering it. “We don’t like cops. There’s not a single kid in this shithole who’d rather live with you than stay here.”

It was a lie, of course; at least a couple of the other occupants of the home would go with them willingly, either because they were desperate to feel loved or because they thought they could pull one over on whatever adults were dumb enough to take them in. And the group home wasn’t even that much of a shithole. Didn’t have much money going around for basic necessities—Ben’s clothes were all hand-me-downs from older boys—but they were treated decently.

Dean’s face hardened, but Cas tilted his head thoughtfully at her and asked, before Dean could say whatever wanted to push its way out of his scowl, “What’s your name?”

“Ugh.” Rolling her eyes, Emma turned and walked away without answering.

When she was almost back to Ben, Emma stopped and looked back. They huddled where they still hadn’t left the bench, Dean’s arm around Cas and his head low to murmur into Cas’s ear.

“Hey, Trench Coat!” she called out and they looked up again. “You’d be a shitty dad.”

She took pride in the avalanche of hurt and sorrow rushing over the timid hope that had graced his face moments before.

“Why did you do that?” Ben asked. His expression didn’t look much happier than Cas’s had, and confused on top of that.

Ten years old and too sweet for his own good, Ben still didn’t get how the world worked. His mom had been nice, from what he’d told her. Maybe too nice. Because even orphaned by a drunk driver and bullied, he thought people were all pretty much good. That was why he needed Emma to look after him. Emma knew better. Her mom had made sure of that.

“Because they’re not good people, Ben. Come on, it’s almost lunch.”

He followed her inside, but wasn’t okay with her answer. The whole time they waited for their dry turkey sandwiches, he pouted at her and worked his jaw like he was trying to come up with something else to say. It came out when they snagged their usual table:

“What makes you say that?” he asked. “What did they do to make you mad at them?”

Putting her lunch down, Emma sighed at him. “They just did. It doesn’t matter.”

Ben frowned his small frown, the one that wanted to be fierce like all the tough guys on TV but could never really live up to it. He was too good of a kid to pull it off. He was sweet, smart about a lot of things but dumb in all the ways that mattered, and she wanted to protect him. It was pretty easy to do that in the group home where no one really cared about them one way or the other. Having a couple men with their own obvious issues meddling in their lives, playing at being parents? Just asking for trouble.

So when Ben opened his mouth again to argue, she scowled at him—and unlike Ben, she could pull off a real scowl—and said, “Let it go, Ben. They’re gone, anyway.”

“Because you scared them off.” She glared and he gave in with a roll of his eyes. “Fine, whatever. They just seemed like they might be cool, is all.”

Okay, so he hadn’t given up. But Emma knew how to end it, and she didn’t hesitate. “They sure had a cool car,” she said with a sneer. Looked ancient, probably doesn’t even have seatbelts, but they’re still driving it—”

“Stop!” Ben’s distressed yell was loud enough to draw attention from the rest of the room, but they looked away just as quickly, used to outbursts from the two of them. “Stop it, Emma.”

It was a low blow, but it worked. She refused to feel guilty about the way he looked like he was about to cry.

-

They weren’t supposed to come back.

They did, not even a week later, and wanted to talk to her. When she refused, they came back the week after that, and somehow she got stuck in a room with them and Ben, and somehow—despite Ben having a meltdown right there and then when Dean brings up his love of classic cars—she and Ben have to pack up their stuff and go live with Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak. At least the assholes ride the bus with them, instead of trying to force Ben into a car.


	2. Poor Little Lamb

_Fourteen_

She hadn’t registered the sound of the shower, but she noticed when it stopped. There wasn’t enough time for her to vanish before Dean stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around him, but he was facing the other way down the hall, towards the room he shared with Cas.

It was Dean, she knew that. Even from behind, she recognized his build, his stature, his hair. But it also wasn’t Dean, or at least, not the Dean she knew, the Dean she expected. She realized, suddenly, that she hadn’t realized she’d never seen him shirtless before.

Scars melted over the flesh of his back: wrinkled flesh made circles on one shoulder, uneven burns shine along his spine, and his right side—there was more destruction than skin, she thought, and what was there has an odd snakeskin pattern to it. “Holy shit,” escaped her before she realized it was forming, and when he whirled around— _“What the fuck?”_ —his chest was somehow an entirely different but equally horrifying kind of graphic. Dozens of individual marks stood out against skin flushed pink from the shower. Thin curves traced out to his arms, jagged slashes fought over the contours of muscle, and her gaze froze on an elongated pucker bursting over his stomach.

They faced off, silent, staring at one another without eye contact. After his initial tense preparation for attack, Dean’s shoulders rolled forward as he hunched in on himself protectively.

“You should be at school,” he accused, but there was no power behind the words. His voice wavered with a vulnerability Emma had never heard before and he was still looking just past her shoulder.

“You should be more careful,” she threw back, because she doesn’t know how not to. “You look like you went ten rounds against the Spanish Inquisition with no ref.”

Dean straightened from his center, mouth twitching to one side. She suddenly didn’t see how she ever thought he was carelessly cheerful and normal; even though he wore the same half-smiling face he showed her when they first met, she could see the straining eyes and quivering throat muscles trying and failing to hide behind it. Was he ever really happy? She couldn’t possibly be the only one to see through him.

“You should see the other guy,” he said with a smirk before striding to his room and slamming the door.

She went down to the living room and waited.

And waited.

When Dean came down, he didn’t yell at her for skipping school or even ask what she was doing. He barely looked at her. But he did stop by the door, adjusting the sleeve of his cheap suit, and say, “I’ve got court, I can’t drive you back. Stay here, we’ll talk later.” Then he was gone, and Emma was alone to think about what had just happened.

Dean probably had opinions about her truancy, but all Emma wanted to know was where all the scars came from. What he’d done to deserve them. She had a few scars of her own, from falls and fights and the night her dad died, and she liked the way they made her feel tough. Clearly, Dean was not similarly fond of his. There had to be a story there, it had all been so deliberate, and she wanted to know what it was.

She wanted to know if she could use it against him.

-

When she woke the next morning, Ben’s door was open and his room was empty. Through the window at the top of the stairs, she saw both cars still in the driveway, but that didn’t mean anything. Ben still hated cars.

She made it to the kitchen and wasn’t surprised to find Dean alone, flipping pancakes and humming off-key. What surprised her, made her falter at the boundary just as her bare feet touched cold tile instead of neutral carpet, was that he was wearing pajama bottoms—plaid flannel monstrosities that Cas got him as a Christmas joke but Dean loved—and nothing else. Shirtless, every inch of abused skin was on display.

Except, it wasn’t. She hadn’t noticed the lines continuing down past where the towel hid him, but they must have, because she could see them dipping below the thin protection of his sleeping pants. She wondered about his legs—did they look like his arms, heavily scarred near the torso but more delicate, less noticeable towards the wrists? Not entirely absent, but she’d seen him in short sleeves before and never noticed the faint web of healed incisions that she knew to look for now, and she’d written off that one noticeable burn on his forearm as something ordinary.

He didn’t react as she pulled out a chair and sat, didn’t say anything or stop humming until he’d dropped the last pancake onto a plate with the bright green spatula he bought because Ben liked it. He brought the plate, overflowing, to the table and set it in front of Emma without meeting her eyes, then spent a few minutes collecting butter, syrup, honey, jam, chocolate sauce.

She liked her pancakes plain.

Finally, he set himself into the chair across from her, the movement so much more contained than his normal careless physicality. He clenched his fists on the edge of the table, but his chest tightened like he wanted to cross his arms over it.

“Okay,” he said, and even though he smiled, his voice was tense and the word clipped off unexpectedly. “Okay, let’s talk.”

“You don’t want to talk,” she pointed out.

“Nothing I want less,” he agreed, “but sometimes you gotta do painful shit anyway.”

He was never as careful with his words around her as Cas, never pulled his punches or talked down to her, but it didn’t make her feel more adult or respected. She resented it, resented him, and as much as she told herself it was because he was faking it, trying to be cool and win her over, the truth she’d never admit was—sometimes she wished, barely, briefly, deeply and secretly, that she still thought of herself as a kid. The way he treated her just reminded her that she couldn’t.

Maybe that was why she responded in the shittiest way she could: “Like getting tortured in an empty warehouse for a month?”

It hit him like a suckerpunch, like she intended, but the choked breath and full-body shiver left her more uneasy than satisfied. She pushed on anyway. “It’s all over the internet. I mean, the stories don’t have your name, but Krissy let it slip once that you’d gone missing for a while and the timing works. It didn’t mention the fun bits, either, just said you were held captive.”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed, a strangled noise the only thing to escape. He hugged himself then, arms wrapping around his own stomach, and looked away. “Yeah, fun as hell,” he muttered.

He looked so small and hurt, so much like the first time she saw Ben, and it just made her angry. Ben was hers, had been hers long before these two showed up wanting to play house, thinking they could fix the fuck-ups into normal kids with _love_ and _understanding_. He had no right to anything of Ben’s, not even her memories of him, and that was probably why she couldn’t stop herself. “So, who was the other guy? I woulda thought Cas, ’cause you never go anywhere without him, codependent mess that you are, but I’ve seen him in swim trunks, plus he’s actually a functional human being, so—”

The chair back slammed against the floor as Dean stood, one decorative bar cracking on the tiles. “Eat your fucking pancakes,” he snapped as he stormed away— _fled_ , her mind sneered.

She left the fucking pancakes right where they were and shut herself in her room. She didn’t want to know the whole story anymore; wished she could get rid of the parts she did know. It didn’t make her feel better anymore. It was just another shitty thing in a world where shitty things happened all the time. Did the details really make a difference?

The slamming door downstairs meant Dean was leaving, but she didn’t hear the car start up. Finally, curious and guilty and trying to smother both emotions, she wandered over to the window to look.

Dean leaned under the hood of his precious car, long green sleeves all the way down his wrists despite the heat and gathering grease stains. He didn’t look up as Krissy and her dad pulled into the driveway, not even when Benny crossed the grass to the garage, clearly talking to him. But when the man set a friendly hand on Dean’s shoulder, he jerked away so violently that he tripped, barely catching himself on the bumper. Krissy rushed over at that, standing just behind her dad as Dean held himself up against the Impala and shook through the adrenaline.

Concern etched into his lined forehead, Benny spoke again. Emma couldn’t see Dean’s face from her window, but from the way Krissy looked at him, he was talking. Probably telling them all about what a bitch Emma was. Whatever, she didn’t care—until Krissy looked up, finding her watching, and she was angrier than Emma had ever seen her. She shook almost as hard as Dean, the vibration starting in her clenched fists as she glared up at her friend.

She was Emma’s best friend. Her only friend. The only kid, other than Ben, who put up with her—liked her—since she was taken from her mom. As Krissy whirled away, stomeds into her house and slammed the door, Emma got the sinking feeling that she lost that.

“So I guess Krissy hates me now,” she muttered without turning when she saw Benny’s broad form reflected in the window a few minutes later. Dean was still outside, trying to lose himself in his engine.

He took his time answering, moseying to her bed and perching on it with incongruous grace. His eyes met hers briefly in the pale mirror of the glass, then slid away to watch Dean still buried in the engine block. His voice rumbled warmly when he said, “Other people are real, _cher_. Some of them have had lives just as hard as yours, only with a few added decades of trouble. Some of them haven’t, but they still feel their own pains just as strong as you.”

“Thanks for the lesson on empathy,” she bit out, “but I’m not actually obligated to give a shit.”

She expected anger, disgust, not the soft chuckle she got. “You would be Dean’s daughter, wouldn’t you.”

The sentiment confused her, but she didn’t care to figure it out. Instead, she focused on the part that would always get a reaction. She spun around, glaring at Benny’s wide smile, and yelled, “He’s not my dad!”

“He’s not, and he is.” He didn’t flinch. “To you, he’s not. That’s your business, and no one can make you feel different. But he sees himself as more than your motel clerk, baby girl. He’s your daddy, yours and Ben’s, and nothin’s changing that, either. You’re family now.”

“Yeah, the kind of family he can toss back when he gets sick of us.”

“No such kind. If that’s what you’re trying for, you’re gonna be doubly disappointed.” His smile faded, replaced by a gentle sadness that almost made her look away. She clenched her jaw to keep scowling. “You keep going down this road and by the time you realize he’s never giving up on you, there’s gonna be nothing left in him to give.”

She shifted uncomfortably, staring back out the window. “I don’t get what you’re trying to say.”

Benny sighed, standing. “I’m saying that he’ll stand by you no matter how many times you break his heart. Try and be gentle, ’cause that’s a lot of power to have over someone. Dean’s loyalty has been used to hurt him before.”

“So why does he do it?”

“He’s never known any other way to be.”

Benny patted her on the shoulder and left, like that was supposed to solve everything. Like it solved _anything_. Just because Dean was too stupid to learn from his mistakes, didn’t mean Emma was going to follow in his footsteps. Even if Benny’s generous interpretation of Dean’s issues was true, it just proved her point.

Trusting people wasn’t worth the pain it caused. She had to look out for herself and for Ben, and that meant keeping anyone who could hurt them at as much of a distance as possible.

-

The scream that woke her that night wasn’t exceptionally loud or violent—no one was dying—so maybe it qualified as more of a yell, a shout, a moan. She’d heard its kind before, but it wasn’t Ben’s voice that time. Still, when she left her room, she opened his door first. He peered at her from beneath blankets pulled up to his nose, scared awake by the sound.

“It’s fine,” she whispered around the guilt. She triggered Dean’s nightmares, there’s no getting around that, but she hadn’t thought about what it would do to her little brother. “I’ll make sure everything’s fine, just go back to sleep.”

He rolled over, always so quick to trust her, and as she closed his door there was more distress from the bedroom across the hall: a groan turning into a whimper, a plea of, “Stop, please, stop it, stop!” But... But that wasn’t Dean.

She hovered in front of their closed door, mind racing as Dean did speak. Low and urgent, he begged, “Cas, wake up. Come on, baby, wake up for me, it’s okay. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, just wake up.”

They got quiet after that, too quiet for Emma to hear anything at all. She went back to bed, but lay awake for a long time. Guilt she wasn’t used to feeling weighed down on her like a too-warm blanket. She’d wanted to hurt Dean, and she had. But having Cas and Ben suffer for it, too? That hadn’t been part of the plan.

Her sleep was troubled when it came, filled with dreams of her mom grinning at her, her dad’s blood flowing out and out and out of his chest to drown her. In the morning, Cas was already gone for his 48-hour paramedic shift by the time they got up for school.

That night, the phone rang just after 2 AM. There was no way it was for her and she was supposed to be asleep in her room, so just to be contrary she answered it before the second chime. A deep male voice, quiet but firm, said, “I need to speak with your father.”

“He’s dead,” she said, taking great pleasure in hanging up without allowing a response.

It rang again in seconds, and this time it was Gabriel snapping at her over the line before she could say anything, “Put Dean on the phone, Princess. _Now_.”

Emma had only met Gabe twice, but he called pretty often. He was always upbeat, a little sly, and eternally dickish to Dean, which she naturally approved of. At that moment, his words were sharp with cold anger and something slipperier, maybe fear? She practically ran up the stairs.

It only took a few seconds to rouse Dean and shove the phone from his nightstand at him, then she ducked into her room with the handset she carried with her from the kitchen just in time to hear Gabe thunder, “Wanna tell me why the fuck you let Cas come to work when he’s having goddamn _flashbacks_ , shithead? Or we can talk about why the fuck he’s back to having them now, that would be pretty fucking good to know.”

The noise Dean made reminded her of Ben again, small and hurt, before he buried it beneath a flow of words. “What the hell are you talking about, Gabe? He’s not—Fuck. He had a nightmare last night, but I didn’t know—fuck! What happened, is he okay?”

“We went to a call at the post office warehouse. Got inside and he just froze. Unresponsive, just fucking standing there. It hasn’t been that bad for years, what the fuck is going on?"

“It’s... come up, the last couple days. He had to talk me down yesterday, I didn’t think he was... Shit, I just didn't think. Every fucking time.” In the silence, she could hear Dean rustling around, getting out of bed. “I’ll be there in twenty—”

“He’s staying at the station,” Gabe said in a tone that allowed no argument. “I don’t know if he’s actually fit to work, but he says it’ll help. He’ll be home tomorrow morning.”

Dean’s voice sounded pitifully broken as he asked, “Can I talk to him?”

As soon as Gabe said, “Yeah,” Emma hung up, heart racing. She couldn’t bear to hear what they said, whether Cas sounded just as fucked up as Dean did because of her. It hurt, the same way it hurt when someone had bullied Ben—no one dared to do that anymore, of course—but she couldn’t fix it the way she’d fixed those pains. It was her fault.

When the phone clutched in her hand indicated Dean had disconnected, she did the only thing she could think of to make it better, even knowing it wasn’t enough. She opened her door, and crossed the hall to Dean’s, and knocked.

For a minute it seemed like he wasn’t going to respond, and she bit her lip so hard it hurt. She needed him to let her in, because otherwise she’d keep feeling guilty and shitty and she hated it. Finally, after what felt like just as long as she’d been waiting for the call to end, he cracked the door open. Even in the faint light, she could see he’d been crying.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, the words bitter and unfamiliar in her mouth. “I just—I’m sorry.”

She flinched when Dean reached for her, because she might have deserved it and she might have hated him, but she never really thought he would hit her. But all he did was pull her in tight against him, whispering soothing words that managed to offer comfort and forgiveness despite the sorrow shaking his voice. It was the first time Emma had ever let either of them hug her.

It felt...

Safe.


	3. Little Drop of Poison

_Fifteen_

Emma’s mom wasn’t supposed to be paroled. Emma’s mom wasn’t supposed to know where she lived. Emma’s mom wasn’t supposed to ever see her again, there was a whole court case and a restraining order and everything.

That was what happened when you killed your daughter’s dad in front of her.

But somehow all those things happened anyway, and Emma was walking out of school when she saw Lydia Penn standing at the gate, scanning through the groups of children. She almost—almost—went to her. But of she looked hard enough, Emma could see the curved lines of barely lighter skin where her mother had branded her, told her to take it without crying or screaming because she had to be strong.

She was strong; she’d become strong, like she needed to be. But that didn’t mean she hated her mom any less for it. She hated her mom even more than she had ever hated Dean, and she didn’t even hate him that much anymore; which was why he was the first person she called as she ducked around the side of the building to the back to hide.

Dean answered almost immediately. “Emma? Is something wrong?”

“My mom’s here,” she told him, proud of how she didn’t sound scared. She didn’t want to be scared. “At the school.” 

Dean was a cop and her adopted guardian. He knew about the protection order, so she didn’t have to force out the words that were sticking in her throat: _I don’t want her here, she scares me, don’t let her take me away._

Without making her say any of that, he swore and promised, “We’ll be there as soon as we can, okay? Me, Cas, and the guys on duty. Just stay safe. Stay away from her. Do you need me to stay on the phone with you?”

She wanted to say yes. Having him there to talk to would help keep her calm, and he’d know right away if anything went wrong, but it would make her feel too weak and childish. She was better than that, stronger than that.

And if her mom did find her, and saw she was hiding behind someone else’s comfort, it would just make things worse. So she told Dean, “No, I’m fine,” and hung up before he could question the lie.

It wouldn’t be a lie, she told herself. She would be fine.

Getting further away from her mom was probably the best course of action. She glanced around and didn’t see anyone but other students, so she left the shadow of the school and ran for the alley behind it, the one she used to get to Ben’s school so they could walk home together. The first block she ran; the second she stopped, looked behind her, and decided it was safe enough. Her mom hadn’t seen her, and no one was around. She could wait there until she heard sirens, or Dean or Cas called her, or—

“You look like you could use some help,” a man’s voice said from just beside her.

Emma spun around, cursing herself for missing him in the dark alcove and ready to fight, but she recognized him and relaxed, if only slightly. Crowley was a creep, but just the kind of creep who sold pot and pills to high schoolers. She’d never done business with him before, but with the rush of adrenaline wearing off and her hands starting to shake, it sounded like a pretty neat idea.

“You got pot?”

He rolled his eyes. “Do I have pot. What do you take me for, an amateur? Of course I have pot.”

She fished out the cash she carried in case of emergency and Crowley pulled out a small bag, but before they could trade one for the other, she heard Cas calling her name from the other side of the block. He really had the worst timing. She braced for the fight, but he stormed past her, ripping his fists into Crowley’s lapels and slamming him against the wall.

“Easy now,” Crowley said—purred?— _purred_ to her guardian. “I’ve missed you too, lover, but I’m not the one who likes it rough.”

She’d seen Dean mad before. It happened kind of a lot—he didn’t have an anger problem, in the same way he didn’t have a drinking problem. He never really lost control over either, but it was always simmering just below the surface and sometimes it burst out. His anger was violent in every way but physical, furious yelling and hurtful words and storming out of the house because he needed to work it off.

But Cas, Cas was ice and lightning and steel. 

“Stay the fuck away from my daughter or I’ll show you how rough I can be,” he snarled.

“Daughter?" Crowley’s gaze slid to her before narrowing back to Cas. “Arithmetic’s part of the job, darling, and that just doesn’t add. Not for lack of trying, but I know _I_ didn’t knock you up. Did you and the copper scrounge up someone’s castoff?”

“You don’t scare me, Crowley.”

“I really should, but then, you’ve always been distressingly stupid. Suck cock like a champ, though.”

Cas ignored the jibe and leaned in, voice never wavering as he said, “You’ve got it wrong, Fergus. You should be scared of me. I’ve left you and your bullshit alone because you aren’t worth my time, but you don’t want me to change my mind. If you think I don’t have enough dirt to bury you in if I go to the cops, you’re just as delusional as ever.”

Sneering, Crowley changed the subject. “Speaking of pigs, did you and the hubby get my wedding present? Only, I never received a pretty little thank you card, so I’m worried it got lost in the mail. The postal service these days is just so unreliable. Not to worry, though, I have another copy, and a few more besides. Tell me, which do you think Dean would like more: the one where I fuck you through withdrawal while you’re begging for another hit, or the time you overdose on ecstasy and I pass you around to the entire—”

He shut up remarkably quickly when Cas slammed a fist into his diaphragm.

“Come near my family again, and I will burn it all down.”

Cas left him on the ground and looked at Emma like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Come on, we should get you home. Lydia’s in custody.”

In the car, she really didn’t want to talk about her mom. That crisis was over and she’d rather never revisit it. But the new development was pretty interesting.

“So,” she clicked her tongue against her teeth, “the creepy neighborhood dealer is your ex-boyfriend?”

Eyes never leaving the road, he clenched his jaw but surprised her with a ground out, “Yes.”

“And you just beat the shit out of him.”

“I thought I was rather restrained,” Cas rumbled in that particular monotone of his that made it impossible to tell if it was deadpan humor or grave sincerity.

“And does Dean know you were Crowley’s crackwhore?"

He was silent another moment longer, but when Emma glanced at him, she was again met with the unexpected. A faint upward twist curved Cas’s lips into what she had come to recognize as his look of exasperated fondness. Until that moment, the expression had been reserved for Dean.

“What?” she snapped, irritated at being associated with him even in that way.

“It may have escaped your notice up to this point, but I married the founding grandmaster of the you-can’t-hurt-me-if-I-hurt-you-first school of defense mechanisms. And to answer your question: yes. He knows all my worst choices and insecurities. You’ll need to stick around at least a couple more years if you want to successfully damage me.”

She had nothing to say to that, so she let the quiet stretch out until they were a few blocks away from the house. When she broke it with, “He hurt you,” it wasn’t really a question and it wasn’t really an apology, but it was close enough to both that she couldn’t look at him after.

“Our relationship was frequently... coercive,” he acknowledged. “It wasn’t healthy for either of us, emotionally or physically.”

“Jesus fuck.” Her exhale came out somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

“Hm?”

“What he was saying, it wasn’t just... I mean, you’re probably the only motherfucker in the world who would call getting beaten and raped repeatedly ‘coercive.’”

“I wouldn’t call it rape,” he said, too mildly.

“Dean would.”

“Yes. Nevertheless, I made the decisions that placed me in that situation. I knew what he was doing, what he would continue to do, and I allowed it to happen.”

“What if it was me?" Emma’s voice was so soft that she could almost pretend it never left her throat, except that Cas answered.

“If you’re ever in a position where you think you need to do the things I thought I need to do, then Dean and I have failed you unforgivably as parents.”

“So it can be your fault something shitty happens to you, but not mine if the same thing happens to me?”

“You misunderstand. I have some responsibility for the circumstances in which I found myself, but I’ve never—well. I no longer consider it to be my fault. I may have made myself vulnerable, but that didn’t give Crowley the right to take advantage. He is fully to blame for his actions, just as I am for mine, and I harbor no misconception as to whose sins are greater.”

“You’re fucking weird, you know that?”

He shot her a wry smile. “So I’ve been told. Usually by my husband.”

Said husband was at the house when they arrived, looking restless and worried even though he had to have known by then that Emma was safe. His relief was short-lived, because Cas just had to open his mouth and say, “She was talking to Crowley.”

Dean’s face turned an interesting shade of red at that. “Did he sell you anything?” he demanded harshly.

Emma shook her head.

“I’m going to kill him,” he vowed. “I’m done, I’m going to fucking—”

“You’re not going to do anything,” Cas interrupted. “It’s not what matters here.”

His calm must have set Dean off—it would’ve pissed Emma off, if she were the one angry to begin with—because he rounded on Cas then. “And why the fuck are you defending him, huh? Still sentimental?”

“He _is_ the only man I ever loved who I didn’t catch fucking my sister in my bed,” Cas replied, and despite the harsh words, his tone was almost thoughtful. And that... that might have been more information than Emma could actually handle right then, on top of everything else. She slipped up the stairs, only catching parts of Dean’s angry retort about roofies and gang rape.

There was more muffled yelling as she turned on the radio in her room, instantly drowning out the argument with loud, angry music. The front door slammed, then slammed again, and out the window she saw Cas close behind Dean as he stalked to the car, trying to get away from the fight like he always did. But when he yanked open the driver’s side door, Cas was close enough to shove it closed and crowd him against it.

They both had their backs to her, Dean staring with tensed shoulders at the Impala’s roof while Cas stood behind him, so she couldn’t see who was talking or try to make out the words, but when Dean sagged and turned in his husband’s arms, resting their foreheads together, she imagined he said something like, “Sorry I’m a cheating piece of shit with a violent temper, I just can’t stop trying to overcompensate for my tiny dick. I’ll probably keep making you miserable for the rest of your life, because I’ll never not be shitty.”

“That’s fine,” the Cas in her head replied, “because I’m a total fucking doormat who’s willing to sacrifice my identity, principles, and self-respect to any sad sack that makes the right noises while fucking me to convince me someone finally loves me. Ha ha, just kidding, I have no self-respect! Heaps of daddy issues, you know how it goes.”

“Boy howdy, do I ever! Speaking of which,” she narrated for Dean as he looked up and caught her watching, “I’m gonna go try to fix mine by pretending to be one at the remarkably well-adjusted teenage girl we’re hoping to Stockholm Syndrome into liking us.”

They both walked back to the house, calmer now, and she turned up the volume to drown out the thudded foreshadowing of Dean’s boots coming up the stairs. The sigh she heaved as she threw herself onto the bed was nearly as melodramatic as, well, throwing herself on the bed, but with no one around to see it, she didn’t care. Arms crossed, she glared at the wall and let her anger stew until Dean opened the door without even knocking.

But when he just stood there, silently, she felt an uncomfortable guilt rising up. She knew it sounded weak, defensive, when she snapped, barely loud enough over the music, “I was just looking for some pot. I’m not some teenage junkie fuckup, I just... I saw my mom and it was shitty and I wanted to relax for a while. I didn’t know you had some gay soap opera baggage with Crowley, I just know some kids who buy from him. Your drama isn’t my fault.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Dean said instead of answering any of that. “You had a lot going on and it was already stressful for you, you don’t need us making it worse. Me,” he stressed, like it was important. “You don’t need me making it worse. No one’s mad at you, okay? We’re just glad you’re okay. Thank you for calling me.”

She stared at him, but couldn’t find a sign of lying or pitying anywhere. Shrugging off the uncomfortable feeling that rose at a genuine apology from him, she muttered, “You’re not so bad, I guess.”


	4. It’s Over

_Sixteen_

As soon as the cop burst through the door, Emma dropped down next to her desk and started shoving books and papers into her bag. So it wasn’t necessary for him to jab a finger at her and bark, “Pack your shit,” but of course he did it anyway. Just had to make a fucking point or something.

The other students were surprisingly silent at the interruption, despite being a pack of loud and easily amused shits the rest of the time. Maybe they were so intimidated by the cop’s abrupt presence that they didn’t want to risk his wrath, but he looked more like a fucking mess than the next ‘Shocking Police Brutality Against Student’ viral video star. More likely they knew just enough about Emma’s life that they were really curious to see what happened and didn’t want to interrupt the drama.

Assholes.

Their substitute teacher, whose name had been on the board at the start of class but was long since erased and forgotten, was conversely way too happy to fill in the gap.

“Now look here, Officer, this is a place of learning. You can’t just burst in and—”

“Fuck, shut up,” Emma groaned as she stood and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “It’s a goddamn suburban high school, not the Library of Alexandria. I’d rather go with him than listen to your bullshit, anyway.”

The teacher gaped at her, but the cop spoke up before anything else could come out of his hipster-goatee-framed mouth. “It’s a family emergency.”

It should’ve been obvious to anyone paying attention that he wasn’t there to arrest her or anything. He didn’t even have a belt on. No gun, no cuffs, no tazer, no radio. Just the uniform, which she guessed was enough to make some people stop looking any closer. Those people were idiots.

So was the teacher, because he was still trying to figure out what was going on and how he could make a stand about it. “Have you checked in with the office? Emergency or no, you need to be approved to—”

“I’m her dad,” Dean said, and because Emma could see that he was already barely holding himself together, just once, she didn’t argue.

She shoved her way past Mr. Whatever and nodded at Dean. Without another word to her or the sputtering teacher, he turned and led the way out of the room. Every time the heavy sole of his shoes hit the floor, it echoed down the empty hallway like a shot; he was obviously way too tense for her to bother asking what was going on.

Emma knew him pretty well by then, almost three years in, so she knew that whatever he couldn’t bring himself to say yet wasn’t the only thing she was afraid of hearing from him. Since she could handle anything else, anything other than losing Ben, instead of pushing it she said, “I gave Krissy a ride today, she’s gonna need to get home.”

That stopped Dean in his tracks, briefly. His jaw unclenched long enough to ask, “You know which room she’s in?”

“Palmer,” she said, pointing to the door.

“Gimme your keys.”

She fished them from her bag without arguing, mentally chalking up another moment of generosity for Dean’s freakout. It would just be more trouble than it was worth to resist at that point, she told herself. She was already in for some kind of headache, and though she was never one to pick her battles—all battles could be her battles as long as she felt like it—she might as well skip one she didn’t care about that much. The only reason she would’ve bothered making a big deal about it was to give Dean a hard time, and kicking him while he was down didn’t appeal as much as it used to.

Dean took the keyring and opened the other classroom door, again without knocking. “Lafitte,” he called as all eyes turned to him, “catch.” He didn’t wait to see if Krissy caught his throw, just shut the door and strode off like a man on a mission.

Nothing else was said on the way out to Dean’s car. Though it wasn’t his black monstrosity parked in the fire lane, but a marked Greenwood Police Department car. In the backseat, when she threw her bag back there, she saw the missing gun belt. He’d come straight from the street, so whatever had happened was a pretty fucking big deal.

She started to get nervous in spite of herself when Dean peeled onto the street without breaking his uncharacteristically stony silence. He wasn’t usually able to keep his mouth shut for that long under any circumstances. He talked when he was mad, he talked when he was upset; she’d even seen him bitch endlessly when he’d been trying to mask fear.

Since he wasn’t going to break the terrible, tense quiet, she did. “Dean?”

“There was a crash,” he said, eyes locked on the road and knuckles white around the steering wheel. “Ben’s okay—broke his leg, but they said he’ll be okay.”

She knew why he stopped there, knew it was her fault he thought she didn’t care past Ben’s well-being. True, that was what mattered most to her; he was her surrogate brother long before Dean and his husband were her surrogate parents. But that didn’t mean she didn’t care at all, so she asked, “And Cas?”

“In surgery. They don’t—” Dean’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “They don’t know. Fuck!” he yelled, slamming his hand against the wheel.

Even though she and Dean understood each other pretty well, they never really got along. Or maybe that was because they understood each other so well. They had all of their worst traits in common, and the stubbornness, the quickness to anger, the barely contained violence they shared played off each other until every argument was the apocalypse.

This, though, could have actually heralded the end of Dean’s world. She had no idea how to handle that or if she even wanted to, but she didn’t want to sit in silence. The quiet gave her too much time to think about all the things that could go wrong.

She didn’t want Cas to die, and the strength of that wish caught her off guard. It wasn’t something she’d thought about much, but it also wasn’t something she had the luxury of not thinking about. Not with all the shit that could mean for her and Ben. When she had considered it, it was clear that they were better off with him and even Dean alive.

But it went beyond that. She had actually kind of grown fond of him since the adoption. He wasn’t family, not the way Ben was. Not the way he and Dean clearly wanted to be and never would. But he was an alright guy, and she got along with him a lot better than she got along with Dean, and even Dean she preferred alive.

She’d miss Cas if he died. She’d be upset if something terrible and lasting happened to him; she was already upset and it was only something terrible of an unknown duration so far. It wasn’t a feeling she was used to having for anyone but Ben, but there it was, distracting her from even worrying about Ben and his broken leg. Ben was going to be fine. Cas, and by extension Dean, might not be.

For all she’d thought she was prepared for worst case scenarios, Emma didn’t know how to handle that one. Grief had never factored into her calculations.

Just to kill the silence, she said, “We’re never going to get Ben into a car again.” It didn’t come out as light as she’d hoped, because it wasn’t really a joke. After the accident that killed his mom, it had taken years—had taken therapy, had taken getting removed from three foster homes who lost patience with him—to get him comfortable riding in a car again. Dean was the first person he’d trusted behind the wheel, but not before months of Dean and Cas bussing everywhere with them.

If Cas survived, maybe Ben would work his way back to driving someday. If not...

“Yeah.” Dean’s chuckle didn’t sound like a laugh, either. But he wanted the distraction as much as she did. “Walking’s gonna be a bitch with that cast, though.”

“Well, maybe he can bike instead.”

Dean snorted out a breath. It was still far from a happy noise, and Emma decided that spending the rest of the ride in anxious silence was preferable to the way Dean’s wounded sounds jabbed at her already aching chest.

When they reached the hospital, everything inside seemed calmer than it should have been. On TV, there was always chaos and crying, people screaming and bleeding and dying all over the place. Instead, it was so quiet that she could hear her own breath as it sped up the deeper they got down the hallways.

Dean seemed to know where he was going, and before long he turned them into a room with a partially open door. At first Emma only saw the doctor’s back, green scrubs with long, brown hair pulled into a braid, but then neon orange pulled her attention to a plaster cast around a small leg and she was moving before she even knew it.

“Emma!”

Looking pale and miserable atop the exam table, Ben flung an arm out to her as soon as she came into view. She was too upset by the sight of him, half his face bruised and the other half bloodless, to feel smug that he’d reached for her instead of Dean. Dean’s presence, Dean’s whole existence, didn’t matter anymore.

It was finally setting in that she’d almost lost her little brother, and Emma—Emma who tried to be strong, who hadn’t let an adult see her cry since the first time her mom knocked her around for it, who had to be brave so that Ben could feel safe—Emma started shaking a soon as Ben’s hand was in hers. 

She wrapped herself around him from behind the table, hands tight around his hands, arms tight around his chest, so that the doctor could continue her work. His hair was wet when she buried her face in it, which made a dozen more questions rush through her mind: had they washed it? Was there blood? Was it his or Cas’s? But at least it meant he probably wouldn’t notice her tears falling into it.

After a few seconds, the doctor said in a voice that was too gentle, like Emma was fragile just because she was acting like it for once, “Try to take it easy on the ribs, he’s got a couple bruised ones. Don’t worry,” she added, “he’s on some pretty strong painkillers right now, so you’re not hurting him. Just don’t want to make anything more tender when it wears off.”

Emma hadn’t been worried; Ben would’ve told her. But she did loosen her grip just a little and made sure her elbows weren’t digging into Ben’s sides.

“Hey, buddy.” Dean’s voice was closer than Emma had realized and so, so tense. “How’re you feeling?”

“How’s Dad?” Ben asked instead of answering.

“I’m gonna go check on him now. You good to stay here with your sister?”

Of course he is, Emma wanted to say but didn’t. He would always be fine with her.

-

Cas wasn’t fine. Cas had taken the brunt of the crash, because he’d seen the truck coming and spun the car around to shield Ben from it. It had probably saved Ben’s life, but it had put Cas in a coma and that—that wasn’t fucking fair. He wasn’t supposed to go away right when Emma had figured out she wanted him around.

Ben cried on her as they sat in Cas’s hospital room a day later, listening to things beep and a machine breathe for him. Dean was outside, yelling at his brother for daring to show up and care about them, which was about right for Dean. He hadn’t even told Sam; Emma had done that the night before, when it was clear that Dean couldn’t handle it by himself.

“You shouldn’t be here! Jess is pregnant and you just started your new job and—”

“And your husband is in a fucking _coma_ , Dean! And don’t think we’re not going to talk about why I had to hear it from your daughter. From _his_ daughter.”

Emma still wasn’t sure about Dean, but being called Cas’s daughter? It didn’t rile her anymore.

Emma’s therapist, in the weekly sessions mandated by her social worker, talked a lot about _families of choice_ and _families of origin._ Bobby Singer, who wasn’t Dean’s uncle and called him _son_ , had said more than once that “family don’t end with blood.” Ben wasn’t her blood, but he was her brother all the same. And while she didn’t know if she’d ever call Cas ‘Dad,’ she thought maybe she’d stop correcting people about it.

If he ever woke up.

-

She took Ben home while Dean and Sam stayed to talk to the doctors more. Well, she took him to Krissy’s house next door, where Krissy and Benny were waiting for them with pinched faces and red eyes. But she left him with them, because as nice as it would have been to stay and let someone take care of her, she felt like needed to be somewhere else.

Back at the hospital.

It was the only place she could try and figure out her changed feelings toward Cas, toward her whole fucked up family situation. The nurse at the desk recognized her and waved her on, saying, “Your dad’s still in there, sweetie.”

Through the crack in the door into Cas’s dark room, she saw Dean sitting hunched by Cas’s bedside, holding his husband’s hand in both of his. Sam stood behind him, a hand on his back but looking at Cas’s face. She was about to push through all the way when Dean broke the silence, his voice rough.

“If he—” Dean choked, pressing his forehead against the back of Cas’s hand. “If something happens, you’ll take care of the kids?”

Sam’s hand tightened on Dean’s shoulder before Emma ducked out of sight, crouching and listening. The conversation wasn’t meant for her, but she’d take it anyway. When Sam spoke, his voice was at once gentle and hard. His words came slowly, deliberate with anger barely contained; he’d had this conversation, or something like it, before, and the only reason he wasn’t currently losing his shit at Dean was the comatose man in front of them.

“If something happens to Cas, Jess and I will _help you_ take care of the kids. Anything you need, we’re there, but Dean—you don’t get to walk away from them.”

“It’s not... I don’t—fuck. Sam, it’d be Dad all over again. You get that, right? You don’t think you’d be better off if he’d left you with Bobby when Mom died?”

“No, I don’t. You know why? Because I had you. _You_ , Dean. You raised me when you were heartbroken and scared and four, you can do it for Emma and Ben at forty.”

“Fuck you,” Dean chuckled wetly, “I’m not forty yet.”

“All the better. I mean it, Dean. If Cas is in there, you know he’ll move heaven and earth to get back to you. And if, God forbid, he can’t, we’re gonna get through it. All of us. You’ve got Ellen and Bobby and Jo and Benny all here. Hell, even Balthazar and Meg. I’ll stay as long as I can, fly up on weekends. Or you and the kids can come stay with us for a while.”

Before, Emma would have been pissed—scared, too, but hiding it behind more anger—that Dean was trying to get rid of them. She searched herself for any sign of that rage, but all she felt was sorrow. It had taken four years, but she was finally settling into the idea that this was permanent, that maybe things could stay. She didn’t think she could handle another violent change.

Cas had to wake up.


	5. Lord I’ve Been Changed

_Seventeen_

It was a perfectly normal morning when the world went and redefined her family again. Things had been going well since Cas got out of the hospital, even she and Dean didn’t fight much anymore. Ben was doing well in therapy, back to allowing the three of them—and no one else—to drive him places; he was also really, really into robotics and programming and trying to single-handedly invent self-driving cars so that no one would ever have to die in a crash again.

But because she got punished every time she got complacent, the phone rang and Emma answered with her usual greeting: “WPBN house,” she said, “this is P.”

 _Winchester, Penn, Braeden, Novak_. She was glad that Dean and Cas had kept their names, because it made Ben feel like just as much a part of the family without having to lose his last connection to his mom. She didn’t care as much for her own surname, but wasn’t ready to change it, either. If she ever did, she’d probably want to be a Braeden to keep close to Ben; asking his permission would be hard, though.

Silence met her greeting, long enough that she prompted again, “Hello?”

“Sorry, hello.” The man sounded flustered, or whatever it was middle-aged men with soothing radio voices got instead of flustered, as he said, “I was trying to reach Castiel Novak’s residence,” with half a question mark at the end.

“Yeah, he’s the N.”

Another pause, like he was waiting for Emma to expand on that, which she had no intention of doing. Finally he asked, “Is he—is he available to take a call?”

Emma checked the clock: twenty minutes before they had to leave. “Depends who’s calling and why.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m...” As he cleared his throat thickly, Emma revised _flustered_ to _maybe crying._ “My name is Michael. Novak. I’m his older brother.”

“Yeah, no.”

That threw him. “What?”

“I’ve met Cas’s older brother. Even if there were somehow another one that no one mentioned, he’d have some weird fucking name like Castiel or Balthazar, not _Michael_.”

Of course, Dean chose that moment to stroll into the kitchen and froze when he overheard her. Then he was bellowing, “Cas!” toward the ceiling and demanding, “Give me the phone,” in pretty much the same breath.

Passing the receiver over wordlessly, Emma watched Dean’s face twist with anger as he snapped, “What the fuck do you want.”

Looked like there was a secret not-uncle Michael after all, and he wasn’t popular with the W portion of the house. Dean paced, eyes roving between the hallway where Cas would emerge and some wrathful middle distance.

“Yeah. Uh huh. No, I really don’t think you’ve given me a reason to consider that any of your fucking business—”

Cas appeared, hair still dripping wet from his shower, and Dean stopped giving a shit about the semi-conversation he was having; he dropped the phone away from his ear, even though Emma could hear Michael still talking, and talked to Cas instead.

“It’s Michael. Do you want to talk to him? You know you don’t have to.”

“I know. But yes. It’s—today, yes. I want to talk to him.”

“We’ll be in the living room,” Dean said, kissing Cas before handing him the phone and jerking his head at Emma to usher her out with him.

Normally she would’ve rebelled at the unspoken command—and even more at a spoken command—but something in Cas’s face and voice as he took the phone and asked, “Michael?” made her go.

Cas was solid. Stoic or zen or whatever it was that kept him calm, except the few times she’d ever seen him truly angry. But it wasn’t anger breaking through; it was vulnerability. He’d only looked frail once before, lying bruised and unresponsive in his hospital bed after the crash, and it scared her that he didn’t look any stronger in that moment.

It must have scared Dean, too, because he couldn’t sit still. As soon as he sat on the couch he was bouncing back up on his feet, stalking toward the kitchen then thinking better of it and spinning around. He went to the window. He pulled books off their shelves and thumbed through without looking. He sat down again.

Since it had been about two minutes and Emma couldn’t hear any of the conversation from the kitchen, she figured she could try to push for information and stop Dean’s annoying fidgeting at the same time.

“So Cas has another brother?”

It worked; Dean stilled.

“Yeah. He, uh.” He looked in the direction of the kitchen again, but must have decided that Cas wouldn’t mind, because he continued, “He was one of five kids, actually.”

She didn’t know if Dean was right that Cas wanted her to know. He had told her all sorts of personal shit about his baggage without blinking, but his other brother had never come up. For as open as he seemed to be, that was a pretty glaring oversight. But it didn’t stop her from wanting to know.

“So he’s got four siblings, and we only know about one after living with you guys for, like, four years. And you hate this one’s guts. There’s gotta be a story there.”

Eyes locked on the doorway to the kitchen, Dean shrugged. “Michael and Cas’s sister, Anna—we haven’t talked to either of them in years. His family more or less disowned him for being gay.”

It was just another example of why Emma didn’t put a whole lot of stock in family, at least not the kind you were forced into. People could be awful no matter if you were related to them or not, she knew that better than most, but she’d never had any clues that Cas did, too. Or maybe she had, and she just hadn’t paid attention. Maybe that was why he’d been the one to keep their little unrelated family together despite Emma’s best efforts to tear it apart.

“His other brother, Lucien—he was kidnapped when they were kids. Never found. Today’s the anniversary, that’s why. I think that’s why Michael’s calling.”

Cas came into the room then, phone dark but still clutched tight in his hand. “Michael would like to host us for Christmas this year. All of us.”

On his feet as soon as he saw his husband, Dean hesitated in his approach. “Would you... Do you want to go?” he asked warily. Emma couldn’t read Cas’s emotions either, had no idea one way or the other.

Cas nodded. “I do. I want to give him a chance, Dean.”

-

It was a big gathering at a bigger house than Emma had ever been inside before. Balthazar came with them, and of course Cas’s other brother Michael was there. Their sister Anna wasn’t—Cas said she had a work conflict, Dean said she probably couldn’t face them yet and he was fine with that—but an uncle and his family were.

Things were tense to begin with, and only got worse from there. Emma tried to ignore the conversations everyone was forcing themselves into, talking to Ben instead of listening to whatever it was Balthazar was saying in a cutting tone, or whatever insult Cas’s uncle Zachariah was hurling in the name of religion. But it came to a head at the table, where something Balthazar said brought out the worst in his uncle.

“Maybe if she’d listened, her son wouldn’t have ended up a catamite!”

In the silence that followed Zachariah’s shouted pronouncement, his wife and their generations of spawn stared down at their plates; Dean clenched a fist around his knife and started to flush red; Balthazar gaped, wide-eyed; Cas calmly cut himself another piece of ham; Michael picked up his napkin and then set it aside; Ben looked to Emma for guidance.

“Sodomite,” Cas said, perfectly conversational, after he finished his bite. All eyes swivelled to him, but he carried on with his meal.

“What?” his uncle finally sputtered.

“If you’re going to use an archaic slur to reduce my identity to the contents of my and Dean’s sexual practices, you ought to at least use the correct one. ‘Catamite’ suggests that I am both younger than Dean and what was historically considered the ‘passive’ partner. The female role, as I’ve no doubt you consider it.

“Seeing as neither of these are true—I’m two years Dean’s senior and our sexual habits are much more varied and exciting than you suggest—”

“You’re disgusting,” Zachariah sneered, face red. “I knew you were a pervert, but I never imagined you’d be so unrepentant in your sin that you talk openly about it in front of the children.”

Though his voice remained calm, Cas set down his silverware and pinned Zachariah with the sort of hard look that Emma usually forgot he was capable of. She preferred forgetting, because the cold steel beneath Cas’s goofy surface unsettled her so much more than the broken boy beneath Dean’s facade.

“You brought it up, Uncle Zachariah, in front of the children. Repeatedly and spitefully, with the intent to humiliate me and my husband. Your concern for what I do with my genitals has always bordered on the obsessive, but I draw the line at allowing you to try and twist a loving and healthy relationship into something vulgar through it.

“Dean and I have sex. It involves our penises and our anuses and our mouths and hands and occasionally other body parts. ‘The children’— _my children_ —know that sex is perfectly healthy and if they are of consenting age and find someone they want to have sex with, they will know that they have nothing to be ashamed of. Whether or not that person or that relationship falls under your definition of sin.”

He picked up his fork and stabbed his next bite of dinner a bit more viciously, but otherwise kept his implaccable calm.

“I think you should leave,” Michael said into the tense silence.

Cas didn’t even flinch, and Emma had to admire that. “Of course. I—”

“No!” Michael stood before Cas could, hand outstretched toward him. “Not you, Cas. I know I have a lot to make up for, but I promise you, you and your family will always be welcome in this house. As you should have been for all these years. I’m sorry for mistreating you in the past, and you have no reason to expect better from me now, but I meant what I told you. I believe God’s love is in all of us, in all of our love, and there’s nothing that can be sinful in that.

“Please,” he added even though Cas didn’t look like he was about to jump out of his chair, “stay. Uncle Zachariah, until you can be respectful of everyone in our family, it’s best for you not to join us anymore.”

Zachariah purpled, leaping to his feet. “You’re choosing that faggot over me?”

“I’m choosing love over hate,” Michael answered serenely. “If you choose to align yourself with bigotry, then yes—I suppose I am choosing ‘that faggot,’ my little brother who has already suffered more than his share for our mistakes. Who is a better man than any of us, for rising above what we put him through to be a good man, a man who saves lives and raises beautiful children with—yes, another man—who loves him.”

“I can’t believe—” Zachariah started with a sneer, but Emma had had enough.

“Hey,” she yelled over him, standing and walking over to get in his face. She’d grown tall over the years and could look him in the eye without much trouble, and even though it’d been years since she last got into a real fight, she still knew how to make her eyes look crazy and dangerous. The violence in her never really went away, she was just better at not giving in. “He said get out, so get the fuck out. Leave my family alone before I make you.”

Flustered, probably at being intimidated by a teenage girl, he shuffled back and acted like leaving was his idea, because of course he had to try and save face. “Come on,” he barked at his family. “We’re done keeping company with sinners.”

In some kind of Christmas miracle, for once people didn’t live up to Emma’s expectations. The rest of the table didn’t join in his outrage and leave with him. Even Zachariah’s wife stayed in her chair, looked up at him with an almost puzzled frown, and said, “No. No, I think you should go, and I think you should be out of the house by the time I get home.”

“What?”

But instead of him, she looked over at one of her grandsons, reached across the table to take Ephraim’s hand. “I love you, Ephie,” she said. “I’m sorry we made you ashamed, but you don’t have to hide anymore. You are loved for who you are, and you are a beautiful young woman.”

Oh. That explained why the kid had kept trying to tug at longer hair that wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t Hester and Zachariah’s grandson, she was their granddaughter, and no wonder that hadn’t gone over well with a patriarch who hated anyone different than him.

“Hey,” she said as gently as she could while still being heard over Zachariah’s blustering. Ephie looked at her shyly. “I’ve got some extra clothes upstairs, since we were gonna stay the night. They might be a bit big, but probably more comfortable than what you’ve got on?”

Ephie and her twin brother both looked at Emma like she was the fucking sun. It felt pretty great.

-

Later that night, when the younger kids had gone to bed and Michael and Cas were talking to their aunt and cousin about everything, Dean cornered her in the living room with a glass of something orange and definitely more alcoholic than she should’ve been allowed.

“I’m proud of you,” he told her. It warmed the same place that Ephie and Nate’s looks had, a warmth that also made her want to cry. “You did a lot of really good things tonight.”

“Yeah, well.” She took a big gulp of the liquor to excuse her stinging eyes. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

“Merry fucking Christmas,” Dean echoed with a laugh. “And you know we love you, right? No matter what.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she didn’t even try.


	6. You Can Never Hold Back Spring

As soon as the plane touched down, the nerves Emma had been ignoring pretty well twisted deep in her gut again. She tightened her grip on the armrest, not even aware of it until long fingers closed around her fist with a reassuring squeeze. Letting out a sigh, she forced herself to relax and smiled over at Lucas.

He returned it shyly, every inch the awkward freshman she met at club fair the year before. She’d asked him out three weeks later, because she’d wanted to and, left to him, they might’ve still be narrowly avoiding eye contact at the twice-weekly Criminal Justice Career meetings. Instead, they held hands as they waited for the doors to open and let them out.

It was a big step, especially since they’d been dating less than a year, and in college. But she wanted him to meet her family, because young or not, she was serious about him. He put up with her bullshit, but not without calling her out—and she needed that. He was good for her, and she was ready to take the next step. She wanted him to meet her family.

Dean, Cas, and Ben were all waiting at the baggage claim and waved them down frantically, even though Emma had obviously seen them. Taking a deep breath, she led Lucas over.

“This is Lucas,” she said when they’d finished smothering her in hugs and turned expectantly to him. “Lucas, these are my dads.”

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties have been taken with the way many systems work in the real world, including adoption, criminal justice, and hospitals.


End file.
